Set your CAC and marketing baselines in MarginOS

The Marketing section of Account Setup holds four inputs: your Average Customer Acquisition Cost, your Monthly Marketing Spend, your CAC Payback Target, and your Primary Sales / Traffic Channel. Two of them change what your dashboards report. The Average CAC is the acquisition cost MarginOS falls back to while no paid ad spend has ever been recorded, and the payback target sets the deadline every CAC-payback verdict is measured against. The other two are profile facts MarginOS stores and does not calculate from. This article covers all four, and tells you plainly which is which.

What the Marketing and Customer Acquisition card is

It is the card directly below the channel-mapping wizard in the Marketing section of the Business Profile tab. Its own subtitle states the most important rule on the screen:

Configure your marketing inputs. A Blended CAC you set here is used only while no paid ad spend has ever been recorded. Once real spend arrives your figure is no longer used: the tile shows the measured CAC, or N/A while there is not enough spend history to compute one.

That sentence is the whole philosophy of the card. What you type here is a starting point for a store with no measured data — not an override that outranks measurement. MarginOS prefers a CAC it computed from your real spend and your real new customers, and when it cannot compute one it says N/A rather than quietly borrowing your typed figure. The full resolution order is covered in How MarginOS resolves blended CAC.

The payback target works the other way round. It is not a fallback and it is never replaced by measurement — it is your constraint, and MarginOS measures your customers against it.

Before you start

You need admin access. Account Setup is admin-only; anyone else sees “Advanced Configuration requires admin privileges.”
Know whether your ad accounts are connected. If Google Ads or Meta Ads is already syncing spend, the Average CAC you type will not be used — MarginOS has real numbers and will use those.
Decide what your cash position can sustain before you touch the payback target. It is a commitment, not an aspiration.
If you ran Express Setup, a payback target of 60 days is already saved. Your Average CAC is only filled in if you supplied one.

Set your marketing baselines in five steps

Click Settings in the sidebar. The page is titled Account Setup.
Select the Business Profile tab, then the Marketing section.
Scroll past the channel-mapping wizard to the Marketing & Customer Acquisition card.
Change the fields you need. Leave Average Customer Acquisition Cost empty if you do not have a figure you believe — empty reads Not set and is a deliberate, supported state.
Click Save Configuration. The save returns straight away and your dashboards pick the change up on their next refresh.

What each field means

Field	What it accepts	What it changes
Average Customer Acquisition Cost ($)	Any amount from 0 upward, or empty. Empty shows Not set. A negative number is rejected with “Customer acquisition cost must be positive.”	Becomes your blended CAC only while no paid ad spend has ever been recorded, and the tile labels it Static (set by operator) so the provenance is visible. Empty means CAC reads N/A instead of a guess.
Monthly Marketing Spend ($)	Any amount from 0 upward. A new account starts at 5,000.	Nothing is calculated from it. It is stored as part of your business profile. Your MER and your CAC are built from the spend your connected ad accounts actually report, never from a typed budget.
CAC Payback Target (days)	A whole number from 15 to 365. A new account starts at 60. The box cannot be saved empty.	Sets the window every CAC-payback verdict is measured over — both how far back MarginOS looks for new customers and how long each of them gets to repay.
Primary Sales / Traffic Channel	One of six choices: Paid social · Paid search · Organic/content · Marketplaces (eg: Amazon) · Email/SMS/retention-led · Retail + DTC hybrid.	Nothing is calculated from it. Your channel reporting is derived from the orders themselves — see how MarginOS assigns each order to a channel.

The payback field carries its own preset hints on screen: 30–45 when cash is constrained, 60–75 as the balanced default, 90 when you are well funded. Clear the box and an amber note appears telling you that without a target your Command Center payback tile cannot say whether you are on or off track.

How MarginOS uses what you enter

The Average CAC is a floor under an empty room, not a ceiling over a full one. It exists so a brand-new account has a defensible acquisition cost before any ad platform is connected. The moment paid spend exists, measurement wins — and a window MarginOS cannot measure stays N/A rather than falling back to your figure. That boundary is deliberate: a tile that borrowed your static number for an unmeasurable window would look confident about a period whose real cost nobody knows, and you would scale on it. This is the same stance described in why MarginOS shows N/A instead of a made-up number.

The payback target changes the question, not just the pass mark. Your CAC Payback tile reports the share of recent new customers who earned their acquisition cost back inside the target. Widen the target from 45 to 90 days and you have changed which customers are in the cohort and how long each one had to repay — so the headline moves for two reasons at once. How MarginOS calculates CAC Payback covers the verdict bands in full.

A change to the target is a rebuild, not a re-colour. Because the target defines the measurement window, MarginOS recomputes the payback picture from scratch when you change it rather than re-labelling the old one. Nothing you have to trigger; the numbers settle on the next refresh.

Saving is immediate and non-destructive. These four fields do not re-cost your order history the way the cost-structure defaults or your payment gateway fees do, so the save returns without a wait. Clearing the Average CAC back to empty is a real save — the stored value is removed, not remembered.

Example

You launch on MarginOS before connecting any ad platform. You know from your own books that you have been paying roughly $48 to acquire a customer, so you type 48 into Average Customer Acquisition Cost and set the payback target to 45 days because your cash cycle is tight. You leave Monthly Marketing Spend at its starting value.

Your Command Center now shows a Blended Paid CAC of $48 with a Static (set by operator) badge, and a CAC Payback tile measured against 45 days. Every CAC-dependent figure — LTGP:CAC, payback, 30-day recovery — has a denominator to work with.

Two weeks later you connect Meta Ads. Once enough spend history exists, the tile switches to a Dynamic CAC badge and reports $61 — higher than your $48, because MarginOS divides paid spend only by the customers your paid channels actually acquired, and your own arithmetic had been including organic customers in the denominator. Your typed $48 is now dormant. It is not deleted, and it would come back only if your paid-spend history vanished entirely.

Six months on, your cash position improves and you raise the payback target to 75 days. The payback headline improves for two distinct reasons: a wider cohort and a longer repayment clock. Your Average CAC field is untouched by any of this — it never was the thing being measured.

Common questions

Why is my CAC tile still N/A after I set an Average CAC?

Because you have real paid spend. The figure you type is used only when MarginOS has no ad-spend history at all to compute from. Once real spend exists, a window MarginOS cannot compute honestly stays N/A rather than being papered over with your static number.

Can I leave the Average CAC empty?

Yes, and that is the right choice if you do not have a figure you trust. The box reads Not set and CAC reports N/A. Every CAC-dependent metric goes dark with it, which is the intended trade: no number beats a made-up one.

Does Monthly Marketing Spend feed my MER or my CAC?

No. Nothing in MarginOS is calculated from it. Marketing Efficiency Ratio and your CAC are both built from the spend your connected ad accounts report, so the way to make them accurate is to connect the accounts, not to keep this box current.

Why will it not save my payback target?

The field cannot be empty and cannot sit outside 15 to 365 days. An out-of-range number is rejected with “Payback target must be between 15 and 365 days.” An empty box is rejected too, and the amber note under the field appears while it is blank. Put a whole number back and save again.

What happens to my dashboards when I change the payback target?

The payback picture is recomputed from scratch, because the target defines the measurement window rather than just the pass mark. You do not have to trigger anything; the tiles settle on the next refresh. Nothing else on the card causes a recompute.

Which payback target should I pick?

The deadline your cash position can actually sustain. The on-screen presets group the common answers: 30 to 45 days when cash is constrained, 60 to 75 as the balanced default, 90 when you are well funded. Do not stretch the target to make the tile look better — you would only be lengthening the deadline you measure yourself against.

The Primary Sales / Traffic Channel box looks empty. Why?

Express Setup records a mixed answer, and the dropdown on this card does not offer mixed as one of its six choices, so the box shows its placeholder until you pick one. Choose the closest option and save. Nothing is calculated from the field either way.

Do I need admin access to change these?

Yes. Account Setup is admin-only, and the save is refused for anyone else. If you cannot open the page you will see “Advanced Configuration requires admin privileges.”

Set your CAC & marketing-spend baselines

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